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Depp,
Burton together again on Sweeney

By Jake Coyle
Associated Press
December 12, 2007

NEW
YORK (AP)—Dressed
in
drag and standing in front of a meat locker,
Johnny Depp
smiles
into the camera and cheerfully declares, “Tim’s a swell guy.”

In its genuine warmth and weirdness, this
moment, played out between scenes during the filming of 1994’s Ed
Wood, encapsulates the ongoing
collaboration between Depp and director Tim Burton.

Even amid the dark, surreal worlds the two
have brought to life, they’re all smiles.

Marking their sixth film together is Sweeney Todd:
The Demon Barber of Fleet
Street, the new adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s gory musical
about a
barber who seeks revenge while cutting the throats of his customers.

“Singing. Who’d have ever thought?”
wondered Burton at a recent interview, where he and Depp both still
found it
hardly comprehensible that two guys who don’t like musicals (including
an actor
who doesn’t sing) had just made one.

While reminiscing about their new film and
17 years of working together, Depp and Burton often pick up each
other’s
conversational trails, most of which end in either reveling in what
they’ve
managed to get away with in Hollywood, or in some kind of
self-deprecating
joke.

Burton continued: “Now you’re going to get
all these scripts and be like, ‘Shall I do Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or Jesus
Christ Superstar?”

Laughing, Depp retorted: “Hair. Then I’m
going straight to Annie.”

The
two can
chuckle at more mainstream fare because they have
both specialized in offbeat eccentrics. Their paths first crossed in
1990’s Edward Scissorhands when Burton cast
Depp in his first leading role following his teen idol success on the
TV series
21 Jump Street.

The two recall their first
meeting with
clarity.

“I remember walking into that coffee shop
like it was yesterday,” said Depp. “I just knew instantly that he was
the real
thing. That was clear to me. There was an instant connection.”

While
many of the classic director-actor
pairings (John Ford and John Wayne, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune)
have
often focused on a particular genre,
the Burton-Depp collaborations
span a
variety of films, albeit ones with a penchant for fantasy.

“We’ve been lucky enough to do things that
the studios never want to do,” said Burton, with Depp adding: “On more
than one
occasion.”

“It’s surreal,” says Burton, a veritable
expert on that topic. “That feeling never quite leaves you that we’re
able to
do something. It’s almost like getting away with something.”

Though Burton has maintained a mostly
consistent record of box office or critical success, Depp has ascended
to the
top of the A-list—a development that has made their risky endeavors a
lot
easier to bankroll.

“He protected me well,” said Depp. “He
fought for me to be in his movies for a number of years.”

The advantage of frequently working together,
Burton and Depp said, is that they have a well-developed shorthand and
are able
to discuss characters in abstract terms but still arrive at the same
understanding.

“When we were doing Sleepy Hollow, Tim and
I were talking about a scene and obviously you
veer off on weird little tears and start talking about Charles Nelson
Reilly or
Paul Lynde or something odd,” said Depp. “A crew member came over to me
after
we were talking and he said, ‘I just listened to you and Tim talk about
the
scene for the last 20 minutes and I didn’t understand a word you guys
were
saying.’”

“That about sums it up,” added Burton.

The two are close friends and Depp is the
godfather to Burton’s young son. But Burton said the partnership has
evolved
without any conscious planning or consideration.

“It surprised me. I wasn’t looking for it,”
said Burton. “You never plan anything, it’s just project to project—if
it’s the
right role and something he responds to. I always think of him because
he can
do anything.”

Others have noticed their unique
relationship, including Chris Lebenzon, who has edited Burton’s last
nine
films, five of which have starred Depp. He compares Burton’s movie sets
to a
strange kind of family.

“Tim is a guy who needs the best people
around him because he won’t always articulate what he wants, but he
knows it,”
said Lebenzon speaking by phone from Los Angeles. “It can frustrate him
if
people aren’t getting it, and Johnny always gets it.”

Depp
originally came to Hollywood to pursue a music
career, but
as a guitarist—he only occasionally sang back up. He had no proper
experience
ever singing before Sweeney Todd, yet
received the blessing of the studio and Sondheim (who could veto any
casting
decision) without so much as a demo tape.

“It’s like, ‘OK, you want to do an R-rated
musical without any clue whether the lead actor can sing or not?’”
marveled
Burton. “He’s finally arrived at the absurd level of show business.”

“I’ll never do it again,” said Depp of
singing. “It was one time only. If it worked at all, it only worked
because of
the circumstances.”

Depp opted not to take singing lessons and
instead hunkered down in a studio with a musician friend to work on his
voice.

“It seemed counterproductive to stand in
front of a piano noodling on scales,” said Depp. “It seemed like you
wouldn’t
be able to find the character.”

Several of the other leads are similarly
distant from being Broadway musical veterans, including Alan Rickman
(who plays
the object of Sweeney’s vengeance) and Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs.
Lovett).
Another frequent actor for Burton, Bonham Carter is also his longtime
girlfriend and mother to his child; a second is expected any day now.
(Said
Burton: “Hopefully, it will turn out to be a human being.”)

For Burton, casting Depp was a matter of
trust in his actor that made him at ease having a non-singer star in
the
musical.

“When Johnny said he thought he could do
it, that was good enough for me,” said Burton. “He wouldn’t have said
that
otherwise. He would have just said, ‘No . . . way in hell I could do
this.’”

Burton is now in the process of planning
two features: Alice in Wonderland and
Frankenweenie, the latter of which is
based on his 1984 short of the same name. Depp, who lives in France
with
long-term girlfriend Vanessa Paradis and their two children, has had
one
project (Shantaram) shelved due to
the writers’ strike. Instead, he recently signed on to star in Michael
Mann’s Public Enemies.

Though they have no immediate plans to work
again together, they both hope—and rather assume—it will happen.

Says Depp: “If the phone rings, he doesn’t
even have to finish the sentence. I’d be there in a second.”